LOS ANGELES – Their basketball season could have ended three months and 17 games ago in the visitors’ locker room after they lost badly to a team that had just beaten them for the 14th consecutive time.

That day, the UCLA women’s basketball players went to their lockers, sat and stared – not at one another but at the carpet. At their sneaker tops. At damp towels and tape torn from aching ankles.

Because that’s the view at the bottom. That’s where they were in January, with a record of 7-6, having lost their fourth consecutive game, wrestling with underachievement and searching for their soul.

And that’s where this team’s March Madness began.

With a remarkable run that included three upset victories and its first Pac-10 Tournament championship, this No. 21-ranked Bruin team (20-10) saved itself from ruin. The fifth-seeded Bruins will open their NCAA women’s tournament Sunday against No. 23 Bowling Green (28-2) at 11:30 a.m. PST at Purdue University’s Mackey Arena in West Lafayette, Ind.

“We’ve been Cinderella already,” says senior point guard Nikki Blue. “We were scared we wouldn’t win again. We just kept fighting. We had no other choice.”

Blue remembers the score of the New Year’s Day defeat: a 91-68 loss to Stanford. But those numbers don’t really tell you how the fear of failure rattled inside her.

That afternoon, Blue, who grew up watching Magic Johnson and wears his No. 32, took the trip back to the UCLA campus with self-doubt riding shotgun.

She didn’t come to Westwood to lose like this, to feel like this, to stare out the side of a bus window, wondering if she was still as gifted as she was four years ago when every college wanted her.

Blue turned down a full scholarship to five-time NCAA champion Connecticut to build up a women’s program at a basketball school more celebrated for its 11-time national-champion men.

She became a Bruin to stay close to her mother, Sabrina, who drives a school bus, runs a barbecue restaurant and makes the trip with 20 other Blue fans from Bakersfield to see every Bruin home game.

Back in January, the Bruins were far from the Top 25 many thought they’d be with the return of three All-America-candidate guards and two improved forwards, Orange County’s Lindsey Pluimer and Amanda Livingston.

But the 7-6 record dropped the Bruins out of the national poll. Freshman Ashlee Trebilcock, their Parade Magazine High School All-America forward, quit the team. Rumors began about 13-year coach Kathy Olivier’s job security.

“I told them to forget the past and start fresh,” recalls Olivier, a former Valencia High, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and Cal State Fullerton guard who lives in Seal Beach. “Inside, I was thinking, ‘We better win!'”

Inside, all the Bruins were thinking the same thing. Fear drove them, making them sprint in practice until they were breathless and sweaty enough to soak the “Think BIG” on their gray T-shirts.

“We just became a better team because we had to,” says junior guard Noelle Quinn, who leads the Bruins with 18.3 points per game.

The situation pushed the Bruins closer together. Away from the coaches, players talked about cooperation. Stars paired up with reserves for free-throw drills.

Ego and jealousy never held a roster spot, even when it would have been easy for the nationally renowned “Triple Threat” backcourt of Blue, Quinn and Lisa Willis to point fingers at weaker links.

“That never happened,” says Blue, a four-time All-Pac-10 player whose best friend on the team is senior Emma Tautolo, a center who has played in only eight games and scored eight points.

“We’re in this together. We need each other. It’s not just a points thing. It’s an emotional one.”

That’s why 6-foot-4-inch sophomore Pluimer, The Register’s three-time Athlete of the Year from San Clemente, lifts weights diligently and takes on a beefy 6-foot-3-inch, 280-pound junior, Marvin Hamlin, from the scout team in practice.

“We’re gutty, and we’ll prove it,” says Willis, an aspiring lawyer who watched “Matlock” and basketball as a child. “Nobody was going to decide our season but us.”

After Jan. 1, the Bruins won 10 of 14 games and finished the regular season with a 17-10 mark. The team even avenged that season-changing Stanford defeat from New Year’s Day, beating the Cardinal by 10 points Jan. 27.

“We were so happy. … We went into the locker room and started yelling, dancing in our sports bras and throwing things,” Pluimer says. “One girl kicked over a stool!”

Then came the Pac-10 Tournament at the HP Pavilion in San Jose. Three nights. Three games. Three chances.

Game 1 against Cal on March 4: The Bruins dive, lunge, scramble, tallying a record 20 steals in the 80-63 victory. This was defense – of their honor.

The March 5 semifinal against No. 11 Arizona State: Down 28-19 at halftime, Olivier tells the team, “We’ve come this far; we’re not going to sit down and die.” Willis scores 20 of 27 points in the second half. Blue crashes inside for a basket, falls, cuts her mouth and bleeds. Quinn sinks two free throws with 29 seconds left to win, 60-59.

The March 6 championship against No. 13 Stanford: Trailing 13 points in the second half, the Bruins rally back. With 5.8 seconds left, Blue passes the ball to Quinn for a turnaround jump shot from 10 feet away to force overtime.

“Signature.” That’s what the team calls Quinn’s move.

Overtime is tense. Bodies bang. Pluimer, panting hard, tries to stop Stanford’s star player, Candace Wiggins. Willis comes to help, gets called for her final foul, then, in an unusual show of emotion, walks to the bench, drops her head and cries, worried she had let down her team.

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